Fashion month has barely started and Rodarte has already delivered the first major beauty talking point.
In the lush surroundings of Los Angeles’ Huntington Gardens the Mulleavy sisters sent out models in floral headdresses (yes, these get the 2019 go-ahead) and glitter pressed make-up. Between the Jerry Hall hair and the logo-belts, it was the unapologetic beauty that’s captured the Instagram buzz.
Nars' make-up maverick James Kailardos used Scotch Tape (smudgy sparkle edges are not acceptable) before pressing on monochrome glitter to the model's eyes and lips. A base colour of jewel tones - ruby, berry and rose, meant the holographic pigments in violet and fuschia popped. ‘The makeup for this show was inspired by the vibrant glitter from classic Hollywood musicals,’ he said.
Like everything, these KiraKira+ glints have a history. Dating back some 30,000 years, glitter's appeal was first realised by prehistoric humans looking for decoration (both cosmetically and for their cave paintings) used mica flakes.
There’s a concept called ‘flickering signifiers’ that marries the sparkle of glitter with the coding of femininity, which is artfully explained by writer Hannah Priest. She surmises in the nanosecond that the light makes them twinkle glitter conveys a message that’s at ‘once childlike and adult, innocent and sexualized.’ It was this potent power that made drag queens and the 1970s glam rockers of Bowie and Iggy Pop use glitter as a tool to query gender.
'There's a theory that our love for glitter is linked to our human instinct to search for water,' theorizes Nic from sustainable glitter producers DiscoDustLondon, 'When humans search for water they search for the glistening surface, which could be a reason why we are so attracted to all things sparkly.'
We could all be a little braver with our beauty, right? If, like us, you have an eyeshadow palette where the well-used browns, taupe sand creams are nestled among the barely touched iridescent shades, use Rodarte’s glitter bombs as a blessing and engage with the subversive power of sparkle.